steps - Page 22 - Developer IT

Property transfers in soapui

- by Scobal

I'm trying to write parallel tests in soapui and need to transfer properties between the test steps I currently have 3 tests steps: Execute legacy request Execute new request XML diff the two responses in a groovy script I've found a lot of blogs about picking values out with xpaths, but nothing about passing the full response through. My questions is how do I fill out the source and target boxes in the property transfer editor?

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Android app not releasing mic/speaker

- by SeaRoth

I have a VOIP application that blocks the microphone and speaker after using it! Steps to reproduce: Place a call on 4G (both mic and speaker work) Place a call on app (both mic and speaker work) Place a call on 4G (Neither mic nor speaker work) Steps to fix mic and speaker: Open applications / Voice Recorder Record something quickly Place call (both mic and speaker work) I have 2 classes with about 300 lines of code each: RtpStreamReceiver RtpStreamSender Am I not releasing something?

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How do I integrate a new MVC C# Project with an existing Web Forms VB.NET Web Application Project?

- by Jordan Rieger

We have a corporate website with a large amount of dynamic business application pages (e.g. Shopping Cart, Helpdesk, Product/Service management, Reporting, etc.) The site was built as an ASP.Net Web Application Project (WAP). Our systems have evolved over the years to use .NET 4.5 and various custom business logic DLLs (written in a mix of C# and VB.NET). However, the site itself is still using VB.NET Web Forms. We now have done a few side projects in MVC 4 using Razor/C#, and we want to use this framework for new pages on the main corporate site going forward. What would be the easiest way to achieve this? I found this nice list of steps to integrate MVC 4 into an existing Web Forms app. The problem is that because our existing app is a VB.NET WAP, it compiles into a single DLL, and .NET allows only one language per DLL. The site is way too big for us to contemplate converting it to C# all at once (yes, I've looked at the conversion tools, and they're good, but even 99% accuracy would leave us a huge amount of cleanup work.) I thought about converting the existing WAP into a Web Site Project (WSP) which does allow mixing languages and then following the steps above, but after a few pages of Google results, I couldn't find any steps for converting a WAP to WSP. (Plenty of sites offer the reverse steps: converting a WSP to a WAP.) Another idea I had was to create a completely separate MVC project, and then somehow squish them together into the same folder structure, where they would share the bin folder but compile to separate DLL's. I have no idea if this is possible, because certain files would collide (e.g. Global.asax, web.config, etc.) Finally, I can imagine a compromise solution where we keep all the MVC stuff in its own separate application under a subfolder of the main solution. We already use our own custom session state solution, so it wouldn't be difficult to pass data between the old site to the new pages. Which of the ideas above do you think makes the most sense for us? Is there another solution that I'm missing?

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Which parts of Graphics Pipelines are done using CPU & GPU?

- by afriza

Which parts of pipelines are done using CPU and which are done using GPU? Reading Wikipedia on Graphics Pipeline, maybe my question does not precisely represent what I am asking. Referring to this question, which "steps" are done in CPU and which are done in GPU? Edit: My question is more into which parts of logical high level steps needed to display terrain+3D models are using CPU/GPU instead of which functions.

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Connecting to SQL Database from another computer

- by yomayne

I'm new to SQL Server, and have been following this tutorial I carefully followed all the steps, but when I try to connect to the database from the other computer, I get the error "Login failed. The login is from an untrusted domain and cannot be used with Windows authentication. (Microsoft SQL Server, Error: 18452)" What steps do I need to take to fix this? Thanks (I'm using SQL Server 2008 R2 on both the machines)

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Executing CLI commands from Java

- by Dolphin

Hi I have this API - which I managed to carryout some API steps solely from the CLI without using their GUI. Now I need to execute these CLI commands (i.e. for carrying out these API steps) in Java. When surfing, I couldn't find a helpful link for sample code on how to deal with this. May I know how to execute CLI commands using Java code (say in a Java class) Appreciate any insight, suggestions or guidance. Many thanks in advance

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how to add classes to build path in eclipse

- by akshay

I have used the folllowing steps to add classes to my build path still i am geting errors as import not resolved.I had followed the following steps. Select Create New Folder and name it TpmWebUIClasses. Click the Advanced button and select the Link to folder in the file system check box. Browse for to the folder where you have copied the classes Make sure the selected folder is listed and then click OK. How can i resolve the error?

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preg_replace not working for charachter \

- by krike

I'm trying to replace \' with ' but it won't work This is the text I want to replace from Using Twitter\'s @Anywhere Service in 6 Steps and this is the code $tutorial = "Using Twitter\'s @Anywhere Service in 6 Steps "; echo $tutorial."<br /><br />"; $tut_title = preg_replace("/\\'/", "'", $tutorial); echo $tut_title;

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Alternative for assigns() in Cucumber with Capybara?

- by thillerson

I'm trying out capybara with cucumber to get some better javascript test coverage. I have a lot of steps that check or use things from the Rails integration test helpers, for instance: assigns(:current_user).should_not be_nil No matter how I call assigns, even if I say something like p assigns it errors with: undefined method `template' for nil:NilClass (NoMethodError) So, it seems that I can't do that anymore. Is there an alternative to introspecting what's going on in the controller, or maybe some way of at least running those steps in such a way that I have the integration test stuff back?

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How to get details about the DTS Step in a running job?

- by vikasde

I have scheduled a DTS to run from a scheduled job. The DTS has several steps in it. Now whenever the job is running and I take a look at the jobs section in Enterprise manager, then it always displays the following in the status: Executing Job Step 1'.... although its running all steps properly. How do I know at what step the DTS is running at?

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SVN: and bash: How to tell if there are uncommitted changes

- by fishtoprecords

I'm trying to wrap a standard sequence of steps in a shell script (linux/bash) and can't seem to figure out how to tell of the execution of svn status returned anything. For example ~/sandbox/$svn status ? pat/foo ~/sandbox/$echo $? 0 If I delete the foo file, then the svn status return nothing, but the echo $? is still 0 I want to not do some steps if there are uncommitted changes. Pointers greatly appreciated.

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Can not set password for mysql server in cent os 6.2

- by HarshanaD

I have installed mysql and then mysql-server. Then i start the mysql demon and follow below steps, # chkconfig --level 2345 mysqld on # mysqladmin -u root password testpassword But i can not set the password because it gives me the below error, Access denied for user root@localhost (using password: no) I logged in as root user and perform those steps. I even uninstalled mysql server and reinstalled but same problem occurred.

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best book to start XML and Html5?

- by asad26

hey every one can some one help that , how can start XML and Html and what i have to start first and what steps should I take , and because I know Objective c as iphone programmer but i what to know more about web base application so please some one help me with steps should I take and as beginner? thanks

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Wordpress > Transfer google verification file to root directory on plugin activation/install

- by Scott B

I've got a wordpress plugin which presets several settings in a wordpress site and creates some default pages which are the same for all my sites. I would like to include an html file in my plugin zip package that is placed into the site's root directory "as is" (same file name, etc) The file is my google verification file, which is the same for all my sites, so I'd like to save a few steps and automate the process of installing it, along with my default setup steps that my plugin handles. Any help, much appreciated.

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Sorting a list of numbers with modified cost

- by David

First, this was one of the four problems we had to solve in a project last year and I couldn’t find a suitable algorithm so we handle in a brute force solution. Problem: The numbers are in a list that is not sorted and supports only one type of operation. The operation is defined as follows: Given a position i and a position j the operation moves the number at position i to position j without altering the relative order of the other numbers. If i j, the positions of the numbers between positions j and i - 1 increment by 1, otherwise if i < j the positions of the numbers between positions i+1 and j decreases by 1. This operation requires i steps to find a number to move and j steps to locate the position to which you want to move it. Then the number of steps required to move a number of position i to position j is i+j. We need to design an algorithm that given a list of numbers, determine the optimal (in terms of cost) sequence of moves to rearrange the sequence. Attempts: Part of our investigation was around NP-Completeness, we make it a decision problem and try to find a suitable transformation to any of the problems listed in Garey and Johnson’s book: Computers and Intractability with no results. There is also no direct reference (from our point of view) to this kind of variation in Donald E. Knuth’s book: The art of Computer Programing Vol. 3 Sorting and Searching. We also analyzed algorithms to sort linked lists but none of them gives a good idea to find de optimal sequence of movements. Note that the idea is not to find an algorithm that orders the sequence, but one to tell me the optimal sequence of movements in terms of cost that organizes the sequence, you can make a copy and sort it to analyze the final position of the elements if you want, in fact we may assume that the list contains the numbers from 1 to n, so we know where we want to put each number, we are just concerned with minimizing the total cost of the steps. We tested several greedy approaches but all of them failed, divide and conquer sorting algorithms can’t be used because they swap with no cost portions of the list and our dynamic programing approaches had to consider many cases. The brute force recursive algorithm takes all the possible combinations of movements from i to j and then again all the possible moments of the rest of the element’s, at the end it returns the sequence with less total cost that sorted the list, as you can imagine the cost of this algorithm is brutal and makes it impracticable for more than 8 elements. Our observations: n movements is not necessarily cheaper than n+1 movements (unlike swaps in arrays that are O(1)). There are basically two ways of moving one element from position i to j: one is to move it directly and the other is to move other elements around i in a way that it reaches the position j. At most you make n-1 movements (the untouched element reaches its position alone). If it is the optimal sequence of movements then you didn’t move the same element twice.

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how to save current state of application

- by medma

hi, I am making an iphone application in which after login we will go through some steps and then finally we make a call from within the app. As we know on making call our app quits so plz suggest me how to resume that state on relaunching the app? 1-login 2-some steps 3-list of numbers 4-call Any help will be appreciated. Thanx..

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Minor tweak to this javascript function?

- by RKS

I have a script that shows/hides used via onClick. I can get it to show/hide just fine, but I can't get it to show/'hide everything else'. So what I get is a bunch of open containers when I really want just the one. Javascript: <script> function showfields(fields){ if(document.getElementById(fields).style.display=='none'){ document.getElementById(fields).style.display='block'; } else{ document.getElementById(fields).style.display = 'none'; } } </script> HTML: <div id="hidden" class="steps" style="display: block;"> <div class="section" style="margin-right: 10px;"> <h2>Something</h2> </div> <button class="continue dropdown" id="showLink" onClick="showfields('hidden2');return false;" href="#">Continue</button> </div> <div id="hidden2" class="steps" style="display: block;"> <div class="section" style="margin-right: 10px;"> <h2>Something2</h2> </div> <button class="continue dropdown" id="showLink" onClick="showfields('hidden3');return false;" href="#">Continue</button> </div> <div id="hidden3" class="steps" style="display: block;"> <div class="section" style="margin-right: 10px;"> <h2>Something3</h2> </div> <button class="continue dropdown" id="showLink" onClick="showfields('hidden3');return false;" href="#">Continue</button> </div> <div id="hidden4" class="steps" style="display: block;"> <div class="section" style="margin-right: 10px;"> <h2>Something4</h2> </div> <button class="continue dropdown" id="showLink" onClick="showfields('hidden4');return false;" href="#">Continue</button> </div> Thanks

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How to change cpufreq settings in Kubuntu

- by Mr Woody

I have been using Kubuntu, and I would like to change the cpufreq settings. My understanding is that there is no applet for that, and I would have to do it with a script. So I run a command like this: sudo cpufreq-set -g userspace -c 0 -d 800Mhz -u 1200Mhz and when I type cpufreq-info, I get cpufrequtils 007: cpufreq-info (C) Dominik Brodowski 2004-2009 Report errors and bugs to [email protected], please. analyzing CPU 0: driver: acpi-cpufreq CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0 1 CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0 maximum transition latency: 10.0 us. hardware limits: 800 MHz - 2.50 GHz available frequency steps: 2.50 GHz, 2.50 GHz, 2.00 GHz, 1.60 GHz, 1.20 GHz, 800 MHz available cpufreq governors: conservative, ondemand, userspace, powersave, performance current policy: frequency should be within 800 MHz and 1.20 GHz. The governor "userspace" may decide which speed to use within this range. current CPU frequency is 1.20 GHz. cpufreq stats: 2.50 GHz:70.06%, 2.50 GHz:0.97%, 2.00 GHz:4.85%, 1.60 GHz:0.35%, 1.20 GHz:2.89%, 800 MHz:20.88% (193873) analyzing CPU 1: driver: acpi-cpufreq CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0 1 CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 1 maximum transition latency: 10.0 us. hardware limits: 800 MHz - 2.50 GHz available frequency steps: 2.50 GHz, 2.50 GHz, 2.00 GHz, 1.60 GHz, 1.20 GHz, 800 MHz available cpufreq governors: conservative, ondemand, userspace, powersave, performance current policy: frequency should be within 2.00 GHz and 2.00 GHz. The governor "performance" may decide which speed to use within this range. current CPU frequency is 2.00 GHz. cpufreq stats: 2.50 GHz:83.43%, 2.50 GHz:1.03%, 2.00 GHz:4.28%, 1.60 GHz:0.01%, 1.20 GHz:1.74%, 800 MHz:9.50% (3208) which shows that everything worked well (on cpu 0). The problem is that if I run cpufreq-info again after few minutes I get cpufrequtils 007: cpufreq-info (C) Dominik Brodowski 2004-2009 Report errors and bugs to [email protected], please. analyzing CPU 0: driver: acpi-cpufreq CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0 1 CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 0 maximum transition latency: 10.0 us. hardware limits: 800 MHz - 2.50 GHz available frequency steps: 2.50 GHz, 2.50 GHz, 2.00 GHz, 1.60 GHz, 1.20 GHz, 800 MHz available cpufreq governors: conservative, ondemand, userspace, powersave, performance current policy: frequency should be within 800 MHz and 800 MHz. The governor "performance" may decide which speed to use within this range. current CPU frequency is 800 MHz. cpufreq stats: 2.50 GHz:69.73%, 2.50 GHz:0.97%, 2.00 GHz:4.83%, 1.60 GHz:0.35%, 1.20 GHz:2.92%, 800 MHz:21.20% (193880) analyzing CPU 1: driver: acpi-cpufreq CPUs which run at the same hardware frequency: 0 1 CPUs which need to have their frequency coordinated by software: 1 maximum transition latency: 10.0 us. hardware limits: 800 MHz - 2.50 GHz available frequency steps: 2.50 GHz, 2.50 GHz, 2.00 GHz, 1.60 GHz, 1.20 GHz, 800 MHz available cpufreq governors: conservative, ondemand, userspace, powersave, performance current policy: frequency should be within 800 MHz and 800 MHz. The governor "performance" may decide which speed to use within this range. current CPU frequency is 800 MHz. cpufreq stats: 2.50 GHz:82.94%, 2.50 GHz:1.03%, 2.00 GHz:4.33%, 1.60 GHz:0.01%, 1.20 GHz:1.73%, 800 MHz:9.96% (3215) so it looks like some other process changed the settings. Does anyone know how to fix this? I also tried many different settings, but I get similar behavior.

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JMS Step 6 - How to Set Up an AQ JMS (Advanced Queueing JMS) for SOA Purposes

- by John-Brown.Evans

JMS Step 6 - How to Set Up an AQ JMS (Advanced Queueing JMS) for SOA Purposes .jblist{list-style-type:disc;margin:0;padding:0;padding-left:0pt;margin-left:36pt} ol{margin:0;padding:0} .c17_6{vertical-align:top;width:468pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt} .c5_6{vertical-align:top;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:0pt 5pt 0pt 5pt} .c6_6{vertical-align:top;width:156pt;border-style:solid;border-color:#000000;border-width:1pt;padding:5pt 5pt 5pt 5pt} .c15_6{background-color:#ffffff} .c10_6{color:#1155cc;text-decoration:underline} .c1_6{text-align:center;direction:ltr} .c0_6{line-height:1.0;direction:ltr} .c16_6{color:#666666;font-size:12pt} .c18_6{color:inherit;text-decoration:inherit} .c8_6{background-color:#f3f3f3} .c2_6{direction:ltr} .c14_6{font-size:8pt} .c11_6{font-size:10pt} .c7_6{font-weight:bold} .c12_6{height:0pt} .c3_6{height:11pt} .c13_6{border-collapse:collapse} .c4_6{font-family:"Courier New"} .c9_6{font-style:italic} .title{padding-top:24pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#000000;font-size:36pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:bold;padding-bottom:6pt} .subtitle{padding-top:18pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#666666;font-style:italic;font-size:24pt;font-family:"Georgia";padding-bottom:4pt} li{color:#000000;font-size:10pt;font-family:"Arial"} p{color:#000000;font-size:10pt;margin:0;font-family:"Arial"} h1{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:24pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} h2{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:18pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} h3{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:14pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} h4{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:12pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} h5{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:11pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} h6{padding-top:0pt;line-height:1.15;text-align:left;color:#888;font-size:10pt;font-family:"Arial";font-weight:normal} This post continues the series of JMS articles which demonstrate how to use JMS queues in a SOA context. The previous posts were: JMS Step 1 - How to Create a Simple JMS Queue in Weblogic Server 11g JMS Step 2 - Using the QueueSend.java Sample Program to Send a Message to a JMS Queue JMS Step 3 - Using the QueueReceive.java Sample Program to Read a Message from a JMS Queue JMS Step 4 - How to Create an 11g BPEL Process Which Writes a Message Based on an XML Schema to a JMS Queue JMS Step 5 - How to Create an 11g BPEL Process Which Reads a Message Based on an XML Schema from a JMS Queue This example leads you through the creation of an Oracle database Advanced Queue and the related WebLogic server objects in order to use AQ JMS in connection with a SOA composite. If you have not already done so, I recommend you look at the previous posts in this series, as they include steps which this example builds upon. The following examples will demonstrate how to write and read from the queue from a SOA process. 1. Recap and Prerequisites In the previous examples, we created a JMS Queue, a Connection Factory and a Connection Pool in the WebLogic Server Console. Then we wrote and deployed BPEL composites, which enqueued and dequeued a simple XML payload. AQ JMS allows you to interoperate with database Advanced Queueing via JMS in WebLogic server and therefore take advantage of database features, while maintaining compliance with the JMS architecture. AQ JMS uses the WebLogic JMS Foreign Server framework. A full description of this functionality can be found in the following Oracle documentation Oracle® Fusion Middleware Configuring and Managing JMS for Oracle WebLogic Server 11g Release 1 (10.3.6) Part Number E13738-06 7. Interoperating with Oracle AQ JMS http://docs.oracle.com/cd/E23943_01/web.1111/e13738/aq_jms.htm#CJACBCEJ For easier reference, this sample will use the same names for the objects as in the above document, except for the name of the database user, as it is possible that this user already exists in your database. We will create the following objects Database Objects Name Type AQJMSUSER Database User MyQueueTable Advanced Queue (AQ) Table UserQueue Advanced Queue WebLogic Server Objects Object Name Type JNDI Name aqjmsuserDataSource Data Source jdbc/aqjmsuserDataSource AqJmsModule JMS System Module AqJmsForeignServer JMS Foreign Server AqJmsForeignServerConnectionFactory JMS Foreign Server Connection Factory AqJmsForeignServerConnectionFactory AqJmsForeignDestination AQ JMS Foreign Destination queue/USERQUEUE eis/aqjms/UserQueue Connection Pool eis/aqjms/UserQueue 2. Create a Database User and Advanced Queue The following steps can be executed in the database client of your choice, e.g. JDeveloper or SQL Developer. The examples below use SQL*Plus. Log in to the database as a DBA user, for example SYSTEM or SYS. Create the AQJMSUSER user and grant privileges to enable the user to create AQ objects. Create Database User and Grant AQ Privileges sqlplus system/password as SYSDBA GRANT connect, resource TO aqjmsuser IDENTIFIED BY aqjmsuser; GRANT aq_user_role TO aqjmsuser; GRANT execute ON sys.dbms_aqadm TO aqjmsuser; GRANT execute ON sys.dbms_aq TO aqjmsuser; GRANT execute ON sys.dbms_aqin TO aqjmsuser; GRANT execute ON sys.dbms_aqjms TO aqjmsuser; Create the Queue Table and Advanced Queue and Start the AQ The following commands are executed as the aqjmsuser database user. Create the Queue Table connect aqjmsuser/aqjmsuser; BEGIN dbms_aqadm.create_queue_table ( queue_table = 'myQueueTable', queue_payload_type = 'sys.aq$_jms_text_message', multiple_consumers = false ); END; / Create the AQ BEGIN dbms_aqadm.create_queue ( queue_name = 'userQueue', queue_table = 'myQueueTable' ); END; / Start the AQ BEGIN dbms_aqadm.start_queue ( queue_name = 'userQueue'); END; / The above commands can be executed in a single PL/SQL block, but are shown as separate blocks in this example for ease of reference. You can verify the queue by executing the SQL command SELECT object_name, object_type FROM user_objects; which should display the following objects: OBJECT_NAME OBJECT_TYPE ------------------------------ ------------------- SYS_C0056513 INDEX SYS_LOB0000170822C00041$$ LOB SYS_LOB0000170822C00040$$ LOB SYS_LOB0000170822C00037$$ LOB AQ$_MYQUEUETABLE_T INDEX AQ$_MYQUEUETABLE_I INDEX AQ$_MYQUEUETABLE_E QUEUE AQ$_MYQUEUETABLE_F VIEW AQ$MYQUEUETABLE VIEW MYQUEUETABLE TABLE USERQUEUE QUEUE Similarly, you can view the objects in JDeveloper via a Database Connection to the AQJMSUSER. 3. Configure WebLogic Server and Add JMS Objects All these steps are executed from the WebLogic Server Administration Console. Log in as the webLogic user. Configure a WebLogic Data Source The data source is required for the database connection to the AQ created above. Navigate to domain > Services > Data Sources and press New then Generic Data Source. Use the values:Name: aqjmsuserDataSource JNDI Name: jdbc/aqjmsuserDataSource Database type: Oracle Database Driver: *Oracle’ Driver (Thin XA) for Instance connections; Versions:9.0.1 and later Connection Properties: Enter the connection information to the database containing the AQ created above and enter aqjmsuser for the User Name and Password. Press Test Configuration to verify the connection details and press Next. Target the data source to the soa server. The data source will be displayed in the list. It is a good idea to test the data source at this stage. Click on aqjmsuserDataSource, select Monitoring > Testing > soa_server1 and press Test Data Source. The result is displayed at the top of the page. Configure a JMS System Module The JMS system module is required to host the JMS foreign server for AQ resources. Navigate to Services > Messaging > JMS Modules and select New. Use the values: Name: AqJmsModule (Leave Descriptor File Name and Location in Domain empty.) Target: soa_server1 Click Finish. The other resources will be created in separate steps. The module will be displayed in the list. Configure a JMS Foreign Server A foreign server is required in order to reference a 3rd-party JMS provider, in this case the database AQ, within a local WebLogic server JNDI tree. Navigate to Services > Messaging > JMS Modules and select (click on) AqJmsModule to configure it. Under Summary of Resources, select New then Foreign Server. Name: AqJmsForeignServer Targets: The foreign server is targeted automatically to soa_server1, based on the JMS module’s target. Press Finish to create the foreign server. The foreign server resource will be listed in the Summary of Resources for the AqJmsModule, but needs additional configuration steps. Click on AqJmsForeignServer and select Configuration > General to complete the configuration: JNDI Initial Context Factory: oracle.jms.AQjmsInitialContextFactory JNDI Connection URL: <empty> JNDI Properties Credential:<empty> Confirm JNDI Properties Credential: <empty> JNDI Properties: datasource=jdbc/aqjmsuserDataSource This is an important property. It is the JNDI name of the data source created above, which points to the AQ schema in the database and must be entered as a name=value pair, as in this example, e.g. datasource=jdbc/aqjmsuserDataSource, including the “datasource=” property name. Default Targeting Enabled: Leave this value checked. Press Save to save the configuration. At this point it is a good idea to verify that the data source was written correctly to the config file. In a terminal window, navigate to $MIDDLEWARE_HOME/user_projects/domains/soa_domain/config/jms and open the file aqjmsmodule-jms.xml . The foreign server configuration should contain the datasource name-value pair, as follows: <foreign-server name="AqJmsForeignServer"> <default-targeting-enabled>true</default-targeting-enabled> <initial-context-factory>oracle.jms.AQjmsInitialContextFactory</initial-context-factory> <jndi-property> <key> datasource </key> <value> jdbc/aqjmsuserDataSource </value> </jndi-property> </foreign-server> </weblogic-jms> Configure a JMS Foreign Server Connection Factory When creating the foreign server connection factory, you enter local and remote JNDI names. The name of the connection factory itself and the local JNDI name are arbitrary, but the remote JNDI name must match a specific format, depending on the type of queue or topic to be accessed in the database. This is very important and if the incorrect value is used, the connection to the queue will not be established and the error messages you get will not immediately reflect the cause of the error. The formats required (Remote JNDI names for AQ JMS Connection Factories) are described in the section Configure AQ Destinations of the Oracle® Fusion Middleware Configuring and Managing JMS for Oracle WebLogic Server document mentioned earlier. In this example, the remote JNDI name used is XAQueueConnectionFactory because it matches the AQ and data source created earlier, i.e. thin with AQ. Navigate to JMS Modules > AqJmsModule > AqJmsForeignServer > Connection Factories then New.Name: AqJmsForeignServerConnectionFactory Local JNDI Name: AqJmsForeignServerConnectionFactory Note: this local JNDI name is the JNDI name which your client application, e.g. a later BPEL process, will use to access this connection factory. Remote JNDI Name: XAQueueConnectionFactory Press OK to save the configuration. Configure an AQ JMS Foreign Server Destination A foreign server destination maps the JNDI name on the foreign JNDI provider to the respective local JNDI name, allowing the foreign JNDI name to be accessed via the local server. As with the foreign server connection factory, the local JNDI name is arbitrary (but must be unique), but the remote JNDI name must conform to a specific format defined in the section Configure AQ Destinations of the Oracle® Fusion Middleware Configuring and Managing JMS for Oracle WebLogic Server document mentioned earlier. In our example, the remote JNDI name is Queues/USERQUEUE , because it references a queue (as opposed to a topic) with the name USERQUEUE. We will name the local JNDI name queue/USERQUEUE, which is a little confusing (note the missing “s” in “queue), but conforms better to the JNDI nomenclature in our SOA server and also allows us to differentiate between the local and remote names for demonstration purposes. Navigate to JMS Modules > AqJmsModule > AqJmsForeignServer > Destinations and select New.Name: AqJmsForeignDestination Local JNDI Name: queue/USERQUEUE Remote JNDI Name:Queues/USERQUEUE After saving the foreign destination configuration, this completes the JMS part of the configuration. We still need to configure the JMS adapter in order to be able to access the queue from a BPEL processt. 4. Create a JMS Adapter Connection Pool in Weblogic Server Create the Connection Pool Access to the AQ JMS queue from a BPEL or other SOA process in our example is done via a JMS adapter. To enable this, the JmsAdapter in WebLogic server needs to be configured to have a connection pool which points to the local connection factory JNDI name which was created earlier. Navigate to Deployments > Next and select (click on) the JmsAdapter. Select Configuration > Outbound Connection Pools and New. Check the radio button for oracle.tip.adapter.jms.IJmsConnectionFactory and press Next. JNDI Name: eis/aqjms/UserQueue Press Finish Expand oracle.tip.adapter.jms.IJmsConnectionFactory and click on eis/aqjms/UserQueue to configure it. The ConnectionFactoryLocation must point to the foreign server’s local connection factory name created earlier. In our example, this is AqJmsForeignServerConnectionFactory . As a reminder, this connection factory is located under JMS Modules > AqJmsModule > AqJmsForeignServer > Connection Factories and the value needed here is under Local JNDI Name. Enter AqJmsForeignServerConnectionFactory into the Property Value field for ConnectionFactoryLocation. You must then press Return/Enter then Save for the value to be accepted. If your WebLogic server is running in Development mode, you should see the message that the changes have been activated and the deployment plan successfully updated. If not, then you will manually need to activate the changes in the WebLogic server console.Although the changes have been activated, the JmsAdapter needs to be redeployed in order for the changes to become effective. This should be confirmed by the message Remember to update your deployment to reflect the new plan when you are finished with your changes. Redeploy the JmsAdapter Navigate back to the Deployments screen, either by selecting it in the left-hand navigation tree or by selecting the “Summary of Deployments” link in the breadcrumbs list at the top of the screen. Then select the checkbox next to JmsAdapter and press the Update button. On the Update Application Assistant page, select “Redeploy this application using the following deployment files” and press Finish. After a few seconds you should get the message that the selected deployments were updated. The JMS adapter configuration is complete and it can now be used to access the AQ JMS queue. You can verify that the JNDI name was created correctly, by navigating to Environment > Servers > soa_server1 and View JNDI Tree. Then scroll down in the JNDI Tree Structure to eis and select aqjms. This concludes the sample. In the following post, I will show you how to create a BPEL process which sends a message to this advanced queue via JMS. Best regards John-Brown Evans Oracle Technology Proactive Support Delivery

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The Art of Productivity

- by dwahlin

Getting things done has always been a challenge regardless of gender, age, race, skill, or job position. No matter how hard some people try, they end up procrastinating tasks until the last minute. Some people simply focus better when they know they’re out of time and can’t procrastinate any longer. How many times have you put off working on a term paper in school until the very last minute? With only a few hours left your mental energy and focus seem to kick in to high gear especially as you realize that you either get the paper done now or risk failing. It’s amazing how a little pressure can turn into a motivator and allow our minds to focus on a given task. Some people seem to specialize in procrastinating just about everything they do while others tend to be the “doers” who get a lot done and ultimately rise up the ladder at work. What’s the difference between these types of people? Is it pure laziness or are other factors at play? I think that some people are certainly more motivated than others, but I also think a lot of it is based on the process that “doers” tend to follow - whether knowingly or unknowingly. While I’ve certainly fought battles with procrastination, I’ve always had a knack for being able to get a lot done in a relatively short amount of time. I think a lot of my “get it done” attitude goes back to the the strong work ethic my parents instilled in me at a young age. I remember my dad saying, “You need to learn to work hard!” when I was around 5 years old. I remember that moment specifically because I was on a tractor with him the first time I heard it while he was trying to move some large rocks into a pile. The tractor was big but so were the rocks and my dad had to balance the tractor perfectly so that it didn’t tip forward too far. It was challenging work and somewhat tedious but my dad finished the task and taught me a few important lessons along the way including persistence, the importance of having a skill, and getting the job done right without skimping along the way. In this post I’m going to list a few of the techniques and processes I follow that I hope may be beneficial to others. I blogged about the general concept back in 2009 but thought I’d share some updated information and lessons learned since then. Most of the ideas that follow came from learning and refining my daily work process over the years. However, since most of the ideas are common sense (at least in my opinion), I suspect they can be found in other productivity processes that are out there. Let’s start off with one of the most important yet simple tips: Start Each Day with a List. Start Each Day with a List What are you planning to get done today? Do you keep track of everything in your head or rely on your calendar? While most of us think that we’re pretty good at managing “to do” lists strictly in our head you might be surprised at how affective writing out lists can be. By writing out tasks you’re forced to focus on the most important tasks to accomplish that day, commit yourself to those tasks, and have an easy way to track what was supposed to get done and what actually got done. Start every morning by making a list of specific tasks that you want to accomplish throughout the day. I’ll even go so far as to fill in times when I’d like to work on tasks if I have a lot of meetings or other events tying up my calendar on a given day. I’m not a big fan of using paper since I type a lot faster than I write (plus I write like a 3rd grader according to my wife), so I use the Sticky Notes feature available in Windows. Here’s an example of yesterday’s sticky note: What do you add to your list? That’s the subject of the next tip. Focus on Small Tasks It’s no secret that focusing on small, manageable tasks is more effective than trying to focus on large and more vague tasks. When you make your list each morning only add tasks that you can accomplish within a given time period. For example, if I only have 30 minutes blocked out to work on an article I don’t list “Write Article”. If I do that I’ll end up wasting 30 minutes stressing about how I’m going to get the article done in 30 minutes and ultimately get nothing done. Instead, I’ll list something like “Write Introductory Paragraphs for Article”. The next day I may add, “Write first section of article” or something that’s small and manageable – something I’m confident that I can get done. You’ll find that once you’ve knocked out several smaller tasks it’s easy to continue completing others since you want to keep the momentum going. In addition to keeping my tasks focused and small, I also make a conscious effort to limit my list to 4 or 5 tasks initially. I’ve found that if I list more than 5 tasks I feel a bit overwhelmed which hurts my productivity. It’s easy to add additional tasks as you complete others and you get the added benefit of that confidence boost of knowing that you’re being productive and getting things done as you remove tasks and add others. Getting Started is the Hardest (Yet Easiest) Part I’ve always found that getting started is the hardest part and one of the biggest contributors to procrastination. Getting started working on tasks is a lot like getting a large rock pushed to the bottom of a hill. It’s difficult to get the rock rolling at first, but once you manage to get it rocking some it’s really easy to get it rolling on its way to the bottom. As an example, I’ve written 100s of articles for technical magazines over the years and have really struggled with the initial introductory paragraphs. Keep in mind that these are the paragraphs that don’t really add that much value (in my opinion anyway). They introduce the reader to the subject matter and nothing more. What a waste of time for me to sit there stressing about how to start the article. On more than one occasion I’ve spent more than an hour trying to come up with 2-3 paragraphs of text. Talk about a productivity killer! Whether you’re struggling with a writing task, some code for a project, an email, or other tasks, jumping in without thinking too much is the best way to get started I’ve found. I’m not saying that you shouldn’t have an overall plan when jumping into a task, but on some occasions you’ll find that if you simply jump into the task and stop worrying about doing everything perfectly that things will flow more smoothly. For my introductory paragraph problem I give myself 5 minutes to write out some general concepts about what I know the article will cover and then spend another 10-15 minutes going back and refining that information. That way I actually have some ideas to work with rather than a blank sheet of paper. If I still find myself struggling I’ll write the rest of the article first and then circle back to the introductory paragraphs once I’m done. To sum this tip up: Jump into a task without thinking too hard about it. It’s better to to get the rock at the top of the hill rocking some than doing nothing at all. You can always go back and refine your work. Learn a Productivity Technique and Stick to It There are a lot of different productivity programs and seminars out there being sold by companies. I’ve always laughed at how much money people spend on some of these motivational programs/seminars because I think that being productive isn’t that hard if you create a re-useable set of steps and processes to follow. That’s not to say that some of these programs/seminars aren’t worth the money of course because I know they’ve definitely benefited some people that have a hard time getting things done and staying focused. One of the best productivity techniques I’ve ever learned is called the “Pomodoro Technique” and it’s completely free. This technique is an extremely simple way to manage your time without having to remember a bunch of steps, color coding mechanisms, or other processes. The technique was originally developed by Francesco Cirillo in the 80s and can be implemented with a simple timer. In a nutshell here’s how the technique works: Pick a task to work on Set the timer to 25 minutes and work on the task Once the timer rings record your time Take a 5 minute break Repeat the process Here’s why the technique works well for me: It forces me to focus on a single task for 25 minutes. In the past I had no time goal in mind and just worked aimlessly on a task until I got interrupted or bored. 25 minutes is a small enough chunk of time for me to stay focused. Any distractions that may come up have to wait until after the timer goes off. If the distraction is really important then I stop the timer and record my time up to that point. When the timer is running I act as if I only have 25 minutes total for the task (like you’re down to the last 25 minutes before turning in your term paper….frantically working to get it done) which helps me stay focused and turns into a “beat the clock” type of game. It’s actually kind of fun if you treat it that way and really helps me focus on a the task at hand. I automatically know how much time I’m spending on a given task (more on this later) by using this technique. I know that I have 5 minutes after each pomodoro (the 25 minute sprint) to waste on anything I’d like including visiting a website, stepping away from the computer, etc. which also helps me stay focused when the 25 minute timer is counting down. I use this technique so much that I decided to build a program for Windows 8 called Pomodoro Focus (I plan to blog about how it was built in a later post). It’s a Windows Store application that allows people to track tasks, productive time spent on tasks, interruption time experienced while working on a given task, and the number of pomodoros completed. If a time estimate is given when the task is initially created, Pomodoro Focus will also show the task completion percentage. I like it because it allows me to track my tasks, time spent on tasks (very useful in the consulting world), and even how much time I wasted on tasks (pressing the pause button while working on a task starts the interruption timer). I recently added a new feature that charts productive and interruption time for tasks since I wanted to see how productive I was from week to week and month to month. A few screenshots from the Pomodoro Focus app are shown next, I had a lot of fun building it and use it myself to as I work on tasks. There are certainly many other productivity techniques and processes out there (and a slew of books describing them), but the Pomodoro Technique has been the simplest and most effective technique I’ve ever come across for staying focused and getting things done. Persistence is Key Getting things done is great but one of the biggest lessons I’ve learned in life is that persistence is key especially when you’re trying to get something done that at times seems insurmountable. Small tasks ultimately lead to larger tasks getting accomplished, however, it’s not all roses along the way as some of the smaller tasks may come with their own share of bumps and bruises that lead to discouragement about the end goal and whether or not it is worth achieving at all. I’ve been on several long-term projects over my career as a software developer (I have one personal project going right now that fits well here) and found that repeating, “Persistence is the key!” over and over to myself really helps. Not every project turns out to be successful, but if you don’t show persistence through the hard times you’ll never know if you succeeded or not. Likewise, if you don’t persistently stick to the process of creating a daily list, follow a productivity process, etc. then the odds of consistently staying productive aren’t good. Track Your Time How much time do you actually spend working on various tasks? If you don’t currently track time spent answering emails, on phone calls, and working on various tasks then you might be surprised to find out that a task that you thought was going to take you 30 minutes ultimately ended up taking 2 hours. If you don’t track the time you spend working on tasks how can you expect to learn from your mistakes, optimize your time better, and become more productive? That’s another reason why I like the Pomodoro Technique – it makes it easy to stay focused on tasks while also tracking how much time I’m working on a given task. Eliminate Distractions I blogged about this final tip several years ago but wanted to bring it up again. If you want to be productive (and ultimately successful at whatever you’re doing) then you can’t waste a lot of time playing games or on Twitter, Facebook, or other time sucking websites. If you see an article you’re interested in that has no relation at all to the tasks you’re trying to accomplish then bookmark it and read it when you have some spare time (such as during a pomodoro break). Fighting the temptation to check your friends’ status updates on Facebook? Resist the urge and realize how much those types of activities are hurting your productivity and taking away from your focus. I’ll admit that eliminating distractions is still tough for me personally and something I have to constantly battle. But, I’ve made a conscious decision to cut back on my visits and updates to Facebook, Twitter, Google+ and other sites. Sure, my Klout score has suffered as a result lately, but does anyone actually care about those types of scores aside from your online “friends” (few of whom you’ve actually met in person)? :-) Ultimately it comes down to self-discipline and how badly you want to be productive and successful in your career, life goals, hobbies, or whatever you’re working on. Rather than having your homepage take you to a time wasting news site, game site, social site, picture site, or others, how about adding something like the following as your homepage? Every time your browser opens you’ll see a personal message which helps keep you on the right track. You can download my ubber-sophisticated homepage here if interested. Summary Is there a single set of steps that if followed can ultimately lead to productivity? I don’t think so since one size has never fit all. Every person is different, works in their own unique way, and has their own set of motivators, distractions, and more. While I certainly don’t consider myself to be an expert on the subject of productivity, I do think that if you learn what steps work best for you and gradually refine them over time that you can come up with a personal productivity process that can serve you well. Productivity is definitely an “art” that anyone can learn with a little practice and persistence. You’ve seen some of the steps that I personally like to follow and I hope you find some of them useful in boosting your productivity. If you have others you use please leave a comment. I’m always looking for ways to improve.

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Using Deployment Manager

- by Jess Nickson

One of the teams at Red Gate has been working very hard on a new product: Deployment Manager. Deployment Manager is a free tool that lets you deploy updates to .NET apps, services and databases through a central dashboard. Deployment Manager has been out for a while, but I must admit that even though I work in the same building, until now I hadn’t even looked at it. My job at Red Gate is to develop and maintain some of our community sites, which involves carrying out regular deployments. One of the projects I have to deploy on a fairly regular basis requires me to send my changes to our build server, TeamCity. The output is a Zip file of the build. I then have to go and find this file, copy it across to the staging machine, extract it, and copy some of the sub-folders to other places. In order to keep track of what builds are running, I need to rename the folders accordingly. However, even after all that, I still need to go and update the site and its applications in IIS to point at these new builds. Oh, and then, I have to repeat the process when I deploy on production. Did I mention the multiple configuration files that then need updating as well? Manually? The whole process can take well over half an hour. I’m ready to try out a new process. Deployment Manager is designed to massively simplify the deployment processes from what could be lots of manual copying of files, managing of configuration files, and database upgrades down to a few clicks. It’s a big promise, but I decided to try out this new tool on one of the smaller ASP.NET sites at Red Gate, Format SQL (the result of a Red Gate Down Tools week). I wanted to add some new functionality, but given it was a new site with no set way of doing things, I was reluctant to have to manually copy files around servers. I decided to use this opportunity as a chance to set the site up on Deployment Manager and check out its functionality. What follows is a guide on how to get set up with Deployment Manager, a brief overview of its features, and what I thought of the experience. To follow along with the instructions that follow, you’ll first need to download Deployment Manager from Red Gate. It has a free ‘Starter Edition’ which allows you to create up to 5 projects and agents (machines you deploy to), so it’s really easy to get up and running with a fully-featured version. The Initial Set Up After installing the product and setting it up using the administration tool it provides, I launched Deployment Manager by going to the URL and port I had set it to run on. This loads up the main dashboard. The dashboard does a good job of guiding me through the process of getting started, beginning with a prompt to create some environments. 1. Setting up Environments The dashboard informed me that I needed to add new ‘Environments’, which are essentially ways of grouping the machines you want to deploy to. The environments that get added will show up on the main dashboard. I set up two such environments for this project: ‘staging’ and ‘live’. 2. Add Target Machines Once I had created the environments, I was ready to add ‘target machine’s to them, which are the actual machines that the deployment will occur on. To enable me to deploy to a new machine, I needed to download and install an Agent on it. The ‘Add target machine’ form on the ‘Environments’ page helpfully provides a link for downloading an Agent. Once the agent has been installed, it is just a case of copying the server key to the agent, and the agent key to the server, to link them up. 3. Run Health Check If, after adding your new target machine, the ‘Status’ flags an error, it is possible that the Agent and Server keys have not been entered correctly on both Deployment Manager and the Agent service. You can ‘Check Health’, which will give you more information on any issues. It is probably worth running this regardless of what status the ‘Environments’ dashboard is claiming, just to be on the safe side. 4. Add Projects Going back to the main Dashboard tab at this point, I found that it was telling me that I needed to set up a new project. I clicked the ‘project’ link to get started, gave my new project a name and clicked ‘Create’. I was then redirected to the ‘Steps’ page for the project under the Projects tab. 5. Package Steps The ‘Steps’ page was fairly empty when it first loaded. Adding a ‘step’ allowed me to specify what packages I wanted to grab for the deployment. This part requires a NuGet package feed to be set up, which is where Deployment Manager will look for the packages. At Red Gate, we already have one set up, so I just needed to tell Deployment Manager about it. Don’t worry; there is a nice guide included on how to go about doing all of this on the ‘Package Feeds’ page in ‘Settings’, if you need any help with setting these bits up. At Red Gate we use a build server, TeamCity, which is capable of publishing built projects to the NuGet feed we use. This makes the workflow for Format SQL relatively simple: when I commit a change to the project, the build server is configured to grab those changes, build the project, and spit out a new NuGet package to the Red Gate NuGet package feed. My ‘package step’, therefore, is set up to look for this package on our feed. The final part of package step was simply specifying which machines from what environments I wanted to be able to deploy the project to. Format SQL Now the main Dashboard showed my new project and environment in a rather empty looking grid. Clicking on my project presented me with a nice little message telling me that I am now ready to create my first release! Create a release Next I clicked on the ‘Create release’ button in the Projects tab. If your feeds and package step(s) were set up correctly, then Deployment Manager will automatically grab the latest version of the NuGet package that you want to deploy. As you can see here, it was able to pick up the latest build for Format SQL and all I needed to do was enter a version number and description of the release. As you can see underneath ‘Version number’, it keeps track of what version the previous release was given. Clicking ‘Create’ created the release and redirected me to a summary of it where I could check the details before deploying. I clicked ‘Deploy this release’ and chose the environment I wanted to deploy to and…that’s it. Deployment Manager went off and deployed it for me. Once I clicked ‘Deploy release’, Deployment Manager started to automatically update and provide continuing feedback about the process. If any errors do arise, then I can expand the results to see where it went wrong. That’s it, I’m done! Keep in mind, if you hit errors with the deployment itself then it is possible to view the log output to try and determine where these occurred. You can keep expanding the logs to narrow down the problem. The screenshot below is not from my Format SQL deployment, but I thought I’d post one to demonstrate the logging output available. Features One of the best bits of Deployment Manager for me is the ability to very, very easily deploy the same release to multiple machines. Deploying this same release to production was just a case of selecting the deployment and choosing the ‘live’ environment as the place to deploy to. Following on from this is the fact that, as Deployment Manager keeps track of all of your releases, it is extremely easy to roll back to a previous release if anything goes pear-shaped! You can view all your previous releases and select one to re-deploy. I needed this feature more than once when differences in my production and staging machines lead to some odd behavior. Another option is to use the TeamCity integration available. This enables you to set Deployment Manager up so that it will automatically create releases and deploy these to an environment directly from TeamCity, meaning that you can always see the latest version up and running without having to do anything. Machine Specific Deployments ‘What about custom configuration files?’ I hear you shout. Certainly, it was one of my concerns. Our setup on the staging machine is not in line with that on production. What this means is that, should we deploy the same configuration to both, one of them is going to break. Thankfully, it turns out that Deployment Manager can deal with this. Given I had environments ‘staging’ and ‘live’, and that staging used the project’s web.config file, while production (‘live’) required the config file to undergo some transformations, I simply added a web.live.config file in the project, so that it would be included as part of the NuGet package. In this file, I wrote the XML document transformations I needed and Deployment Manager took care of the rest. Another option is to set up ‘variables’ for your project, which allow you to specify key-value pairs for your configuration file, and which environment to apply them to. You’ll find Variables as a full left-hand submenu within the ‘Projects’ tab. These features will definitely be of interest if you have a large number of environments! There are still many other features that I didn’t get a chance to play around with like running PowerShell scripts for more personalised deployments. Maybe next time! Also, let’s not forget that my use case in this article is a very simple one – deploying a single package. I don’t believe that all projects will be equally as simple, but I already appreciate how much easier Deployment Manager could make my life. I look forward to the possibility of moving our other sites over to Deployment Manager in the near future. Conclusion In this article I have described the steps involved in setting up and configuring an instance of Deployment Manager, creating a new automated deployment process, and using this to actually carry out a deployment. I’ve tried to mention some of the features I found particularly useful, such as error logging, easy release management allowing you to deploy the same release multiple times, and configuration file transformations. If I had to point out one issue, then it would be that the releases are immutable, which from a development point of view makes sense. However, this causes confusion where I have to create a new release to deploy to a newly set up environment – I cannot simply deploy an old release onto a new environment, the whole release needs to be recreated. I really liked how easy it was to get going with the product. Setting up Format SQL and making a first deployment took very little time. Especially when you compare it to how long it takes me to manually deploy the other site, as I described earlier. I liked how it let me know what I needed to do next, with little messages flagging up that I needed to ‘create environments’ or ‘add some deployment steps’ before I could continue. I found the dashboard incredibly convenient. As the number of projects and environments increase, it might become awkward to try and search them and find out what state they are in. Instead, the dashboard handily keeps track of the latest deployments of each project and lets you know what version is running on each of the environments, and when that deployment occurred. Finally, do you remember my complaint about having to rename folders so that I could keep track of what build they came from? This is yet another thing that Deployment Manager takes care of for you. Each release is put into its own directory, which takes the name of whatever version number that release has, though these can be customised if necessary. If you’d like to take a look at Deployment Manager for yourself, then you can download it here.

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Running TeamCity from Amazon EC2 - Cloud based scalable build and continuous Integration

- by RoyOsherove

I’ve been having fun playing with the amazon EC2 cloud service. I set up a server running TeamCity, and an image of a server that just runs a TeamCity agent. I also setup TeamCity to automatically instantiate agents on EC2 and shut them down based upon availability of free agents. Here’s how I did it: The first step was setting up the teamcity server. Create an account on amazon EC2 (BTW, amazon’s sites works better in IE than it does in chrome.. who knew!?) Open the EC2 dashboard, and click “Launch Instance” . From the “Quick Start” tab I selected from the list: “Getting Started on Microsoft Windows Server 2008 (AMI Id: ami-c5e40dac)” . it’s good enough to just run teamcity. In the instance details, I used the default (Small instance, 1.7 GB mem). You might want to choose a close availability zone based on where you are. We want to “Launch instances” so click continue. Select the default kernel, RAM disk and all. No need to enable monitoring for now (you can do that later). click continue. If you don’t have a key pair, you will be prompted to create one. Once you do, select it in the list. Now you’ll be prompted to create a security group. I named mine “TC” as in “TeamCity”. each group is a bunch of settings on which ports can be let through into and out of a hosted machine. keep it as the default settings. We will change them later. Click continue, review and then click “Launch”. Now you’ll be able to see the new instance in the running instances list on your site. Now, you need to install stuff on that instance (TeamCity!) . To do that, you’ll need to Remote desktop into that instance. To do that, we’ll get the admin password for that instance: Check it on the list, and click “Instance Actions” - “Get Windows Admin Password”. You might have to wait about 10 minutes or so for the password to be generated for you. Once you have the password, you will remote desktop (start-run-‘mstsc’) into the instance. It’s address is a dns address shown below the list under “Public DNS”. it looks something like: ec2-256-226-194-91.compute-1.amazonaws.com Once you’re inside the instance – you’ll need to open IE (it is in hardened mode so you’ll have to relax its security settings to download stuff). I first downloaded chrome and using chrome I downloaded TeamCity. Note that the download speed is FAST. several MBs per second. To be able to see TeamCity from the outside, you will need to open the advanced firewall settings inside the remote machine, and add incoming and outgoing rules for port 80 (HTTP). Once you do that, you should be able to see the machine from the outside. If you still can’t, see the next step. I also enabled ports 9090 since I will use this machine to create an agent image later as well. Now configure the security group (TC) to enable talking to agents: IN the EC2 dashboard click on “Security Groups” and select your group. To add a rule, click on the empty list under the ‘protocol’ header. select TCP. from and ‘to’ ports are 9090. source ip is 0.0.0.0/0 (every ip is allowed). click “Save. Also make sure you can see “HTTP” tcp 80 in that list. if you can’t see it, add it or you won’t be able to browse to the machine’s teamcity server home page. I also set an elastic IP for the machine: so I always have the same IP for the machine instance. Allocate and set one through the”Elastic IP” link on the EC2 dashboard. you should now have a working instance of teamcity. Now let’s create an agent image. Repeat steps 1-9, but this time, make sure you select a machine that fits what an agent might do. I selected Instance type – Hihg-CPU medium machine, that is much faster. On that machine, I installed what I needed (VS 2010, PostSharp etc..). downloading VS 2010 from MSDN (2 GB took less than 10 min!) Now, instead of installing teamcity, browse using the browser to the teamcity homepage (from within the remote machine). go to the Administration page, and click the upper right link “Install agents”. Install the agent on he local machine – set it to the IP or DNS of the running TeamCity server. That way you’ll be able to check their connectivity live before making this machine your official agent image to reuse. Once the agent is installed, see that the TC server can see it and use it. see steps 13-14 above if they can’t. Once it works, you can take steps to make this image your agent image to be reused. next, here is a copy-paste of several steps to take from http://confluence.jetbrains.net/display/TCD5/Setting+Up+TeamCity+for+Amazon+EC2 Configure system so that agent it is started on machine boot (and make sure TeamCity server is accessible on machine boot). Test the setup by rebooting machine and checking that the agent connects normally to the server. Prepare the Image for bundling: Remove any temporary/history information in the system. Stop the agent (under Windows stop the service but leave it in Automatic startup type) Delete content agent logs and temp directories (not necessary) Delete "<Agent Home>/conf/amazon-*" file (not necessary) Change config/buildAgent.properties to remove properties: name, serverAddress, authToken (not necessary) Now, we need to: Make AMI from the running instance. Configure TeamCity EC2 support on TeamCity server. Making an AMI: Check the instance of the agent in the EC2 dashboard instance list, and select instance actions->Create Image (EBS AMI) you’ll see the image pending in the APIs list in the EC2 dashboard. this could take 30 minutes or more. meanwhile we can configure the could support in the teamcity server. COPY THE AMI ID to the clipboard (looks like ami-a88aa4ce) Configuring TeamCity for Cloud: In TeamCity, click on “Agents” and then on “Cloud” tab. this is where you will control your cloud agents. to configure new cloud agents based on APIs, click on the right link to the “configuration page” Create a new profile and select AMazon EC2 as cloud type. Use your AMI ID that you copied to the clipboard into the “Images” field. Select an availability zone that is the same as the one your instance is running on for best communication perf between them make sure you select the ‘TC’ security group hopefully, that should be it, and teamcity will try to instantiate new instances on demand. Note that it may take around 10 minutes for an agent to become available to teamcity from the time it’s started.

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Establishing WebLogic Server HTTPS Trust of IIS Using a Microsoft Local Certificate Authority

- by user647124

Everyone agrees that self-signed and demo certificates for SSL and HTTPS should never be used in production and preferred not to be used elsewhere. Most self-signed and demo certificates are provided by vendors with the intention that they are used only to integrate within the same environment. In a vendor’s perfect world all application servers in a given enterprise are from the same vendor, which makes this lack of interoperability in a non-production environment an advantage. For us working in the real world, where not only do we not use a single vendor everywhere but have to make do with self-signed certificates for all but production, testing HTTPS between an IIS ASP.NET service provider and a WebLogic J2EE consumer application can be very frustrating to set up. It was for me, especially having found many blogs and discussion threads where various solutions were described but did not quite work and were all mostly similar but just a little bit different. To save both you and my future (who always seems to forget the hardest-won lessons) all of the pain and suffering, I am recording the steps that finally worked here for reference and sanity. How You Know You Need This The first cold clutches of dread that tells you it is going to be a long day is when you attempt to a WSDL published by IIS in WebLogic over HTTPS and you see the following: <Jul 30, 2012 2:51:31 PM EDT> <Warning> <Security> <BEA-090477> <Certificate chain received from myserver.mydomain.com - 10.555.55.123 was not trusted causing SSL handshake failure.> weblogic.wsee.wsdl.WsdlException: Failed to read wsdl file from url due to -- javax.net.ssl.SSLKeyException: [Security:090477]Certificate chain received from myserver02.mydomain.com - 10.555.55.123 was not trusted causing SSL handshake failure. The above is what started a three day sojourn into searching for a solution. Even people who had solved it before would tell me how they did, and then shrug when I demonstrated that the steps did not end in the success they claimed I would experience. Rather than torture you with the details of everything I did that did not work, here is what finally did work. Export the Certificates from IE First, take the offending WSDL URL and paste it into IE (if you have an internal Microsoft CA, you have IE, even if you don’t use it in favor of some other browser). To state the semi-obvious, if you received the error above there is a certificate configured for the IIS host of the service and the SSL port has been configured properly. Otherwise there would be a different error, usually about the site not found or connection failed. Once the WSDL loads, to the right of the address bar there will be a lock icon. Click the lock and then click View Certificates in the resulting dialog (if you do not have a lock icon but do have a Certificate Error message, see http://support.microsoft.com/kb/931850 for steps to install the certificate then you can continue from the point of finding the lock icon). Figure 1: View Certificates in IE Next, select the Details tab in the resulting dialog Figure 2: Use Certificate Details to Export Certificate Click Copy to File, then Next, then select the Base-64 encoded option for the format Figure 3: Select the Base-64 encoded option for the format For the sake of simplicity, I choose to save this to the root of the WebLogic domain. It will work from anywhere, but later you will need to type in the full path rather than just the certificate name if you save it elsewhere. Figure 4: Browse to Save Location Figure 5: Save the Certificate to the Domain Root for Convenience This is the point where I ran into some confusion. Some articles mentioned exporting the entire chain of certificates. This supposedly works for some types of certificates, or if you have a few other tools and the time to learn them. For the SSL experts out there, they already have these tools, know how to use them well, and should not be wasting their time reading this article meant for folks who just want to get things wired up and back to unit testing and development. For the rest of us, the easiest way to make sure things will work is to just export all the links in the chain individually and let WebLogic Server worry about re-assembling them into a chain (which it does quite nicely). While perhaps not the most elegant solution, the multi-step process is easy to repeat and uses only tools that are immediately available and require no learning curve. So… Next, go to Tools then Internet Options then the Content tab and click Certificates. Go to the Trust Root Certificate Authorities tab and find the certificate root for your Microsoft CA cert (look for the Issuer of the certificate you exported earlier). Figure 6: Trusted Root Certification Authorities Tab Export this one the same way as before, with a different name Figure 7: Use a Unique Name for Each Certificate Repeat this once more for the Intermediate Certificate tab. Import the Certificates to the WebLogic Domain Now, open an command prompt, navigate to [WEBLOGIC_DOMAIN_ROOT]\bin and execute setDomainEnv. You should then be in the root of the domain. If not, CD to the domain root. Assuming you saved the certificate in the domain root, execute the following: keytool -importcert -alias [ALIAS-1] -trustcacerts -file [FULL PATH TO .CER 1] -keystore truststore.jks -storepass [PASSWORD] An example with the variables filled in is: keytool -importcert -alias IIS-1 -trustcacerts -file microsftcert.cer -keystore truststore.jks -storepass password After several lines out output you will be prompted with: Trust this certificate? [no]: The correct answer is ‘yes’ (minus the quotes, of course). You’ll you know you were successful if the response is: Certificate was added to keystore If not, check your typing, as that is generally the source of an error at this point. Repeat this for all three of the certificates you exported, changing the [ALIAS-1] and [FULL PATH TO .CER 1] value each time. For example: keytool -importcert -alias IIS-1 -trustcacerts -file microsftcert.cer -keystore truststore.jks -storepass password keytool -importcert -alias IIS-2 -trustcacerts -file microsftcertRoot.cer -keystore truststore.jks -storepass password keytool -importcert -alias IIS-3 -trustcacerts -file microsftcertIntermediate.cer -keystore truststore.jks -storepass password In the above we created a new JKS key store. You can re-use an existing one by changing the name of the JKS file to one you already have and change the password to the one that matches that JKS file. For the DemoTrust.jks that is included with WebLogic the password is DemoTrustKeyStorePassPhrase. An example here would be: keytool -importcert -alias IIS-1 -trustcacerts -file microsoft.cer -keystore DemoTrust.jks -storepass DemoTrustKeyStorePassPhrase keytool -importcert -alias IIS-2 -trustcacerts -file microsoftRoot.cer -keystore DemoTrust.jks -storepass DemoTrustKeyStorePassPhrase keytool -importcert -alias IIS-2 -trustcacerts -file microsoftInter.cer -keystore DemoTrust.jks -storepass DemoTrustKeyStorePassPhrase Whichever keystore you use, you can check your work with: keytool -list -keystore truststore.jks -storepass password Where “truststore.jks” and “password” can be replaced appropriately if necessary. The output will look something like this: Figure 8: Output from keytool -list -keystore Update the WebLogic Keystore Configuration If you used an existing keystore rather than creating a new one, you can restart your WebLogic Server and skip the rest of this section. For those of us who created a new one because that is the instructions we found online… Next, we need to tell WebLogic to use the JKS file (truststore.jks) we just created. Log in to the WebLogic Server Administration Console and navigate to Servers > AdminServer > Configuration > Keystores. Scroll down to “Custom Trust Keystore:” and change the value to “truststore.jks” and the value of “Custom Trust Keystore Passphrase:” and “Confirm Custom Trust Keystore Passphrase:” to the password you used when earlier, then save your changes. You will get a nice message similar to the following: Figure 9: To Be Safe, Restart Anyways The “No restarts are necessary” is somewhat of an exaggeration. If you want to be able to use the keystore you may need restart the server(s). To save myself aggravation, I always do. Your mileage may vary. Conclusion That should get you there. If there are some erroneous steps included for your situation in particular, I will offer up a semi-apology as the process described above does not take long at all and if there is one step that could be dropped from it, is still much faster than trying to figure this out from other sources.

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Azure Diagnostics: The Bad, The Ugly, and a Better Way

- by jasont

If you’re a .Net web developer today, no doubt you’ve enjoyed watching Windows Azure grow up over the past couple of years. The platform has scaled, stabilized (mostly), and added on a slew of great (and sometimes overdue) features. What was once just an endpoint to host a solution, developers today have tremendous flexibility and options in the platform. Organizations are building new solutions and offerings on the platform, and others have, or are in the process of, migrating existing applications out of their own data centers into the Azure cloud. Whether new application development or migrating legacy, every development shop and IT organization needs to monitor their applications in the cloud, the same as they do on premises. Azure Diagnostics has some capabilities, but what I constantly hear from users is that it’s either (a) not enough, or (b) too cumbersome to set up. Today, Stackify is happy to announce that we fully support Azure deployments, just the same as your on-premises deployments. Let’s take a look below and compare and contrast the options. Azure Diagnostics Let’s crack open the Windows Azure documentation on Azure Diagnostics and see just how easy it is to use. The high level steps are: Step 1: Import the Diagnostics Oh, I’ve already deployed my app without the diagnostics module. Guess I can’t do anything until I do this and re-deploy. Step 2: Configure the Diagnostics (and multiple sub-steps) Do I want it all? Or just pieces of it? Whoops, forgot to include a specific performance counter, I guess I’ll have to deploy again. Wait a minute… I have to specifically code these performance counters into my role’s OnStart() method, compile and deploy again? And query and consume it myself? Step 3: (Optional) Permanently store diagnostic data Lucky for me, Azure storage has gotten pretty cheap. But how often should I move the data into storage? I want to see real-time data, so I guess that’s out now as well. Step 4: (Optional) View stored diagnostic data Optional? Of course I want to see it. Conveniently, Microsoft recommends 3 tools to do this with. Un-conveniently, none of these are web based and they all just give you access to raw data, and very little charting or real-time intelligence. Just….. data. Nevermind that one product seems to have gotten stale since a recent acquisition, and doesn’t even have screenshots! So, let’s summarize: lots of diagnostics data is available, but think realistically. Think Dev Ops. What happens when you are in the middle of a major production performance issue and you don’t have the diagnostics you need? You are redeploying an application (and thankfully you have a great branching strategy, so you feel perfectly safe just willy-nilly launching code into prod, don’t you?) to get data, then shipping it to storage, and then digging through that data to find a needle in a haystack. Would you like to be able to troubleshoot a performance issue in the middle of the night, or on a weekend, from your iPad or home computer’s web browser? Forget it: the best you get is this spark line in the Azure portal. If it’s real pointy, you probably have an issue; but since there is no alert based on a threshold your customers have likely already let you know. And high CPU, Memory, I/O, or Network doesn’t tell you anything about where the problem is. The Better Way – Stackify Stackify supports application and server monitoring in real time, all through a great web interface. All of the things that Azure Diagnostics provides, Stackify provides for your on-premises deployments, and you don’t need to know ahead of time that you’ll need it. It’s always there, it’s always on. Azure deployments are essentially no different than on-premises. It’s a Windows Server (or Linux) in the cloud. It’s behind a different firewall than your corporate servers. That’s it. Stackify can provide the same powerful tools to your Azure deployments in two simple steps. Step 1 Add a startup task to your web or worker role and deploy. If you can’t deploy and need it right now, no worries! Remote Desktop to the Azure instance and you can execute a Powershell script to download / install Stackify. Step 2 Log in to your account at www.stackify.com and begin monitoring as much as you want, as often as you want and see the results instantly. WMI? It’s there Event Viewer? You’ve got it. File System Access? Yes, please! Would love to make sure my web.config is correct. IIS / App Pool Info? Yep. You can even restart it. Running Services? All of them. Start and Stop them to your heart’s content. SQL Database access? You bet’cha. Alerts and Notification? Of course! You should know before your customers let you know. … and so much more. Conclusion Microsoft has shown, consistently, that they love developers, developers, developers. What every developer needs to realize from this is that they’ve given you a canvas, which is exactly what Azure is. It’s great infrastructure that is readily available, easy to manage, and fairly cost effective. However, the tooling is your responsibility. What you get, at best, is bare bones. App and server diagnostics should be available when you need them. While we, as developers, try to plan for and think of everything ahead of time, there will come times where we need to get data that just isn’t available. And having to go through a lot of cumbersome steps to get that data, and then have to find a friendlier way to consume it…. well, that just doesn’t make a lot of sense to me. I’d rather spend my time writing and developing features and completing bug fixes for my applications, than to be writing code to monitor and diagnose.

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Connect to running web role on Azure using Remote Desktop Connection and VS2012

- by Magnus Karlsson

We want to be able to collect IntelliTrace information from our running app and also use remote desktop to connect to the IIS and look around(probably debugging). 1. Create certificate 1.1 Right-click the cloud project (marked in red) and select “Configure remote desktop”. 1.2 In the drop down list of certificates, choose <create> at the bottom. 1.3. Follow the instructions, you can set it up with default values. 1.4 When done. Choose the certificate and click “Copy to File…” as seen in the left of the picture above. 1.5. Save the file with any name you want. Now we will save it to local storage to be able to import it to our solution through the azure configuration manager in step 3. 2. Save certificate to local storage Now we need to attach it to our local certificate storage to be able to reach it from our confiuguration manager in visual studio. Microsoft provides the following steps for doing this: http://support.microsoft.com/kb/232137 In order to view the Certificates store on the local computer, perform the following steps: Click Start, and then click Run. Type "MMC.EXE" (without the quotation marks) and click OK. Click Console in the new MMC you created, and then click Add/Remove Snap-in. In the new window, click Add. Highlight the Certificates snap-in, and then click Add. Choose the Computer option and click Next. Select Local Computer on the next screen, and then click OK. Click Close , and then click OK. You have now added the Certificates snap-in, which will allow you to work with any certificates in your computer's certificate store. You may want to save this MMC for later use. Now that you have access to the Certificates snap-in, you can import the server certificate into you computer's certificate store by following these steps: Open the Certificates (Local Computer) snap-in and navigate to Personal, and then Certificates. Note: Certificates may not be listed. If it is not, that is because there are no certificates installed. Right-click Certificates (or Personal if that option does not exist.) Choose All Tasks, and then click Import. When the wizard starts, click Next. Browse to the PFX file you created containing your server certificate and private key. Click Next. Enter the password you gave the PFX file when you created it. Be sure the Mark the key as exportable option is selected if you want to be able to export the key pair again from this computer. As an added security measure, you may want to leave this option unchecked to ensure that no one can make a backup of your private key. Click Next, and then choose the Certificate Store you want to save the certificate to. You should select Personal because it is a Web server certificate. If you included the certificates in the certification hierarchy, it will also be added to this store. Click Next. You should see a summary of screen showing what the wizard is about to do. If this information is correct, click Finish. You will now see the server certificate for your Web server in the list of Personal Certificates. It will be denoted by the common name of the server (found in the subject section of the certificate). Now that you have the certificate backup imported into the certificate store, you can enable Internet Information Services 5.0 to use that certificate (and the corresponding private key). To do this, perform the following steps: Open the Internet Services Manager (under Administrative Tools) and navigate to the Web site you want to enable secure communications (SSL/TLS) on. Right-click on the site and click Properties. You should now see the properties screen for the Web site. Click the Directory Security tab. Under the Secure Communications section, click Server Certificate. This will start the Web Site Certificate Wizard. Click Next. Choose the Assign an existing certificate option and click Next. You will now see a screen showing that contents of your computer's personal certificate store. Highlight your Web server certificate (denoted by the common name), and then click Next. You will now see a summary screen showing you all the details about the certificate you are installing. Be sure that this information is correct or you may have problems using SSL or TLS in HTTP communications. Click Next, and then click OK to exit the wizard. You should now have an SSL/TLS-enabled Web server. Be sure to protect your PFX files from any unwanted personnel. Image of a typical MMC.EXE with the certificates up. 3. Import the certificate to you visual studio project. 3.1 Now right click your equivalent to the MvcWebRole1 (as seen in the first picture under the red oval) and choose properties. 3.2 Choose Certificates. Right click the ellipsis to the right of the “thumbprint” and you should be able to select your newly created certificate here. After selecting it- save the file. 4. Upload the certificate to your Azure subscription. 4.1 Go to the azure management portal, click the services menu icon to the left and choose the service. Click Upload in the bottom menu. 5. Connect to server. Since I tried to use account settings(have to use another name) we have to set up a new name for the connection. No biggie. 5.1 Go to azure management portal, select your service and in the bottom menu, choose “REMOTE”. This will display the configuration for remote connection. It will actually change your ServiceConfiguration.cscfg file. After you change It here it might be good to choose download and replace the one in your project. Set a name that is not your windows azure account name and not Administrator. 5.2 Goto visual studio, click Server Explorer. Choose as selected in the picture below and click “COnnect using remote desktop”. 5.2 You will now be able to log in with the name and password set up in step 5.1. and voila! Windows server 2012, IIS and other nice stuff! To do this one I’ve been using http://msdn.microsoft.com/en-us/library/windowsazure/ff683671.aspx where you can collect some of this information and additional one.

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